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Warning: This blog may or may not be entertaining, funny, or relevant to topics popular in the present day. The only thing I ask is to read these with an open mind and comment on them with negative or positive feedback. Enjoy.

I haven’t always been an outwardly opinionated person. In fact, when I was an adolescent I had the bad trait of accepting everything I was taught as factual and never questioned anything. This is more than likely a common habit of children, and those in their early teenage years, since we are typically scolded for questioning and speaking against what information is fed to us. Now that I am older (and somewhat wiser), I’ve learned that the less someone voices their opinion the more that person appears to be weak or unintelligent. This might sound preposterous to some and even cruel when taken at face value, but I firmly believe that we were put on this Earth to speak our minds and stand up for what we believe in. This ideology is even more present in the age of technology and social networking, where anybody with a computer can make their stances known.

With websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and this site (WordPress) there are countless mediums readily available to the masses that provide instant input and output to a global audience. Personally, I’m a bit behind on the times and only utilize a few sites to satiate my growing networking appetite. In fact, until a few years ago, my thoughts on Facebook were fairly negative and I didn’t see the point in posting every event in one’s daily endeavors. Time passed and my stance weakened, which resulted in my conformance to what has ended up furthering my confidence in voicing my opinions.

Many might say that online commentary isn’t as genuine as face-to-face interaction since anyone can be bold when sitting behind their computers far from the public scrutiny. This point is partially true with the constant trend of cyber-bullies, “trolls”, and anybody who takes pleasure in turning their communication filter off in an effort to offend or beleaguer. However, a person’s sincerity with regards to social media can’t be deduced to the difference between an online or a public forum. For me, I find that the greatest benefit of expressing myself online is that I can actually reach out to people outside of my immediate social circle. Since most of my family doesn’t have the same interest in the sports, music, or societal concerns, the internet is similar to walking into the Cheers bar; everybody knows your name and what makes you unique.

Now that I’ve given a prelude to my internet pre-history and views on the social status of this generation’s surfing habits on the web, I’ll move on to some more relevant material.

A little over a year ago I started writing blogs about my favorite hockey team, the Detroit Red Wings. My first experience on a blogging site was through a smaller based page that had only a limited viewership. It became frustrating to write for the site because I’d submit an article and get little to no responses on a daily basis. It’s hard to grow as a writer if you can’t get any kind of feedback and constructive criticism. After about of month of writing essentially to myself, I decided to look elsewhere. While browsing the pages on Facebook I stumbled upon a group called NHLNFA (which stands for “National Hockey League National Fan Association”). In a nutshell, the site is a group of various writers who blog about various topics related to professional hockey, be it team specific or league news. When I was accepted into the group and started blogging I found an immediate reaction to my articles. Mind you, most of the responses were from family at first, but as time passed I began getting a little more attention and became more prolific in writing my articles.

Now, it’s a year later and I’ve hit a slight bump in the road. I have slowed the number of pieces that I write and have gone months in between articles, at times. It’s not so much that I lost interest in writing, I just felt that my passion for the game was being watered down by analyzing the game down to the most minute of stats. So I have come to the conclusion that while I still want to write articles, I should produce them at a medium pace. One that allows for a decent amount of relevance to the sport without taking away from the joy I get from just sitting back and enjoying the game for what it is; entertainment. With that being said, I’ve finally decided to branch out and cover a broader number of topics and also plan to write about what others want to read about. Not exactly a revolutionary notion, but for me it is a good way to sharpen my skills.

(If you’ve gotten to this part of the article then you’re probably wondering if there is a general thesis; well there isn’t.) My goal is to put this blog out there as a way to get initial feedback and get a sense of how big of a following I’ll get. My aim is not to become widely popular, or even slightly popular, but I do want to get a few amount of people so I don’t feel like I’m writing a journal. Expect to see comments in either the link description, or the posting on Facebook, asking my readers to suggest the next topic that I should cover. If given a topic that is within my writing abilities, I will then scour the internet or other means of information gathering (do they still make encyclopedias in print form?) to research the topic and give my educated opinion in regards to said material. I truly hope that this will work out to an extent because the thought of being a literary form of a “DJ” sounds too fun to have a short-lived existence.

I appreciate, in advance, all of those who are kind enough to humor me in my new quest to recreationally write about things that people care about. Please note that a lot of my posted links will be through Facebook or on WordPress.com and I’ll probably read most of the comments on my Facebook feed. Feedback is necessary for me to keep writing to my target audience, so please fire away. Thank you.